Nowhere Near Ground Zero, But No More Welcome

Nowhere Near Ground Zero, But No More Welcome

Far from Ground Zero, Other Plans for Mosques Run into Vehement Opposition

by

Annie Gowen

MURFREESBORO, TENN. -- For more than 30 years, the Muslim community in
this Nashville suburb has worshipped quietly in a variety of makeshift
spaces -- a one-bedroom apartment, an office behind a Lube Express --
attracting little notice even after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.

But when the community's leaders proposed a 52,900-square-foot Islamic
center with a school and a swimming pool this year, the vehement
backlash from their neighbors caught them by surprise. Opponents crowded
county meetings and held a noisy protest in the town square that drew
hundreds, some carrying signs such as "Keep Tennessee Terror Free."

"We haven't experienced this level of hostility before ever, so it's new
to us," said Saleh M. Sbenaty, an engineering professor who is
overseeing the mosque's planned expansion.

The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate
have surfaced in communities from California to Florida in recent
months, raising questions about whether public attitudes toward Muslims
have shifted.

In Tennessee, three plans for new Islamic centers in the Nashville area
-- one of which was ultimately withdrawn -- have provoked controversy
and outbursts of ugliness. Members of one mosque discovered a delicately
rendered Jerusalem cross spray-painted on the side of their building
with the words "Muslims go home."

The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro became a hot-button political issue
during this month's primary election, prompting failed Republican
gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey to ask whether Islam was a "cult."

Another candidate paid for a billboard high above Interstate 24 near Nashville that read: "Defeat Universal Jihad Now."

Evangelist Pat Robertson weighed in Thursday, wondering on his
television program whether a Muslim takeover of America was imminent and
whether local officials could be bribed. (The mayor of the county where
the Islamic Center is proposed called that idea "ridiculous.")

The members of the Murfreesboro mosque, who say they have always rejected extremism, have been bewildered by the vitriol.

Sbenaty, 52, who came to the United States from Syria for his doctoral
studies three decades ago, gets misty-eyed describing the kindness his
neighbors showed his family after Sept. 11. At one point, he recalled,
he was in a shopping mall parking lot with his wife, who wears a hijab,
and a group of locals made a point to stop and assure them they had
nothing to fear.

The other day, however, as he was standing on the mosque's 15-acre
parcel of land just outside town, drivers honked and flipped their
middle fingers in the air as they rode past.

"It's tough to see that change," Sbenaty said.

Change in tone

A Time magazine poll released Thursday found that 43 percent of
Americans hold unfavorable views of Muslims, far outpacing the numbers
for Mormons (29 percent), Catholics (17 percent), Jews (13 percent) and
Protestants (13 percent). Twenty-five percent of those polled said most
Muslims in the United States are not patriotic Americans.

Although the overall level of anti-Muslim sentiment hasn't shifted much
since the uproar over the mosque near Ground Zero, the change in tone
has been striking, religious scholars and other experts say.

The reasons are myriad: rising fears of homegrown terrorism after the
Fort Hood shootings and the attempted Times Square bombing, the rhetoric
of the burgeoning "tea party" political movement and increasing
unhappiness with President Obama. A growing number of Americans -- one
in five -- believe the president is a Muslim, according to a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

"It shouldn't be surprising that there's a negative reaction to this
mosque," said Richard Lloyd, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt
University. "Because you can connect it to this global media event in
New York, it just reinforces this siege mentality local residents have."

Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University, said a
Florida church's plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of
Sept. 11 is emblematic of the country's new mood.

"Something more is happening," Ahmed said. "We are becoming aware that
the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims is wider than it was after 9/11,
and that's a frightening prospect."

In the Nashville area, the Muslim population has grown to 20,000 to
25,000, fueled by the arrival of Somalis fleeing strife and the federal
government's decision to resettle Iraqi refugees there after the Persian
Gulf War. Central Tennessee is now home to the country's largest
population of Iraqi Kurds.

The community has outgrown its four mosques, where men often have to
pray in the parking lots because of the crowds, leaders say.

'A certain amount of fear'

Murfreesboro, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville, is a quiet town of
100,000 people, largely white conservative Christians. Residents take
pride in the historic town square skirting an antebellum courthouse, the
site of a famous Confederate raid during the Civil War. Patriotic
banners line the lampposts. On the highway, there's a Sonic drive-in
every few miles. Gospel music radio stations are as numerous as those
playing country music.

The 250 or so families -- about 1,000 people -- who worship at the
existing Islamic Center come from around the globe and include doctors,
car salesmen and students from nearby Middle Tennessee State University.
Members of the mosque have raised about $600,000 to buy land and
prepare the site for a 10,000-square-foot gathering place. Plans for a
school, pool and cemetery are expected to take years to complete.

But the vision of a large-scale complex has caused consternation among locals.

"What I sense is a certain amount of fear fueling the animosity," said
Jim Daniel, a former county commissioner and former county Republican
Party chairman, sitting down for lunch one day last week at City Cafe.
Residents worry that "the Muslims coming in here will keep growing in
numbers and override our system of law and impose sharia law," the
strict code of conduct based on the Koran.

Daniel and his dining partner -- the local Democratic Party chairman,
Jonathon Fagan, 32 -- say they're uneasy about the proposal but agree
that Rutherford County followed the law when it approved the plans for
the Islamic Center in May.

"We have to allow them freedom of religion," Fagan said with a tight
smile. "It takes courage to live in a free country. We have to have the
courage to do that, even if we don't agree with it."

The man leading the fight against the mosque is a stocky 44-year-old
correctional officer named Kevin Fisher. After he heard about the
proposal, he voiced his opposition with an op-ed in the town's
alternative weekly.

Fisher spent his formative years in Buffalo, where a homegrown terrorist
cell of Yemeni Americans was uncovered in 2002. Its presence in a place
so familiar haunts Fisher to this day, he said. He is well aware that
clerics at U.S. mosques have been accused of espousing radical views in
the years before and after Sept. 11.

And he pointed out that one of the Murfreesboro mosque's board members
was suspended after the discovery of a MySpace page where he had posted
Arabic poetry and a photo of the founder of the Islamic militant group
Hamas. Leaders of the mosque said their internal investigation showed no
wrongdoing, and they are cooperating with federal authorities looking
into the matter.

"So many things about Islam are disconcerting," Fisher said. "As they
get bigger, there will be concerns about the ideology, what they preach
and what they believe."

Fisher, who is African American, chafes when the mosque's supporters
"dial up the rhetoric from the '60s" to attack opponents by accusing
them of bigotry against Muslims.

"It's offensive to me," he said. His stepmother "was dragged off
restaurant stools in the 1960s and has cigarette burns in her arm.
That's discrimination."

Town square showdown

One recent hot day, the two sides met at a protest rally in the
Murfreesboro town square. Opponents of the mosque marched, prayed and
sang "God Bless America." They were greeted by a line of
counter-protesters with peace signs. Fingers pointed. Words flew.

About 1,000 people were there, and afterward, one of them, Sherry
McLain, told a local radio station that she was worried about plans that
had surfaced this spring for new Islamic centers in her town and two
nearby communities.

"That frightens me," she said. "Something's going on, and I don't like it. We're at war with these people."

Fisher said the protest was a "a beautiful example of our democracy at
work." But Lema Sbenaty, Saleh's 19-year-old daughter and an MTSU
student, didn't see it that way.

"I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that," she said later. "You could see the hatred in their eyes."

On Friday night, Lema and her mother, Fetoun, 47, a preschool teacher,
gathered with about 200 others at the existing Islamic Center for iftar,
the feasts held during the holy month of Ramadan to break the daily
sunrise-to-sunset fasting.

The mosque, housed in a low-slung office building, is divided into two
suites, one for men and one for women. In the women's room, about 35
women listened to prayers via closed-circuit TV streaming from the men's
side and then sat cross-legged on the floor for a dinner of rice and
lamb with yogurt sauce. One of the men had pulled his Dodge Ram truck up
to the door of the mosque and cooked the lamb -- butchered according to
halal guidelines -- in a huge pot just outside.

As dozens of children played, Lema, Fetoun and the others said they were
dismayed that their hopes for a larger worship space had garnered such
negative attention nationally. They said they hoped it would be resolved
peacefully and soon.

Further

With the toxic Bibi circus in town - cue talk of "tentacles of terror" - find hope in the extraordinary Combatants For Peace, a joint effort by weary Israeli and Palestinian veterans of violence who've laid down their guns to fight for peace. Led by a former IDF soldier and Fatah militant who both lost daughters to the conflict's "unrightable wrongs," they insist on the need to "hear what is painful" and talk to your 'enemies': "Partners for peace always exist. You only have to look for them."